18 MUSEUMS AND LIBRARIES METROPOLITAN MUSEUM, Fifth Ave at 82nd St.- Portraits of George Sand, Delacroix, Baude- laire, Berlioz, and a very young Sarah Bern- hardt are among those on view in an exhibi- tion of works by the master photographer N adar (Félix Tournachon, 1820-1910). Through July 9.... f]J "The Seven Deadly Sins," a suite of paintings by Paul Cadmus, is at the center of a smaU show of his works (another of which is "The EIghth Sin: Jealousy"). . . . f]J "An Egyptian Bestiary," a large non-petting zoo of falcons, baboons, hippos, and ibis, in stone, ivory, gold, bronze, and wood. . . . f]J The Costume Institute has come up with a fresh tdke on the uadi tional spring flower show: in "Bloom: Fdshion's Spring Gardens," one wanders among stands of gowns, blouses, and waistcoats adorned with tropical exotica, blue-blood roses, black fieurs du mal, and a host of other flora. . . . f]J "R. B. Kitaj," a retro- spective of more than seventy paintings by the American expatriate who for nearly four decades has lived and worked in London. Through May 14. . . . f]J "The Architecture of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1870- 1995," a hundred renderings, sketches, and working drawings. . . . f]J Five large architec- tural models (scale: one Inch = one foot) detail the phases in the current renovation of the Greek and Roman galleries. Also on view are recent dcquisitions and newly re- stored works. (Open Tuesdays through Sun- days, 9:30 to 5:15, and Friday and Saturday evenings until 8:45.) MUSEUM OF MODERN ARTr 11 W. 53rd St.-A retro- spective of video installations, sculptural ob- jects, walk-in environments, and sound pieces by Bruce Nauman. Through May 23.... f]J "Helen Chadwick: Bad Blooms," another variation on the spring flower show-large, round photographs of flowers suspended in different substances (dandelions in hair gel, narcissi in bath bubbles, bluebells in oil and milk). Through July 11. . . .f]J Tom Fried- man's deadpan sculptures are the subject of the current "projects" show. A self-portrait has been carved from a regular-sized aspirin tablet; other pieces incorporate bubble gum, spdghetti, and dust. Through May 18.... f]J "Americdn Sculptors in the 1960s: Se- lected Drawings from the Collection," a superb selection of works on pdper, with an emphasis on American minimalism and post- minimalism. Many are working drawings, and the curators have also included some of the finished sculptures-by Sol LeWitt, Rob- ert Smithson, and Carl Andre; Smithson's mirrored corner piece is especially beauti- ful. Through June 13. . . . f]J "Max Beckmann Prints" includes lithographs, drypoints, and woodcuts from throughout the German Ex- pressionist's career. Through May 9. (Open Saturdays through Tuesdays, 11 to 6; Thurs- days and Fridays, noon to 8:30.) GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM, Fifth Ave. at 89th St.-A Ross Bleckner retrospective treats us to lib- eral helping of the painter's familiar stew of sublimity and kitsch-the work of a soul profoundly divided between the raptures of a mvstic and the whimsies of an interior deco ator. Much of it is sickly gorgeous; some of it betrays a deep spiritual longing. Through May 14. . . . f]J A ten-year survey of the work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres. This Cuban-born Neo-ConcepLualist supplements his tYPIcally sparse or abstract imagery (stdcks of paper, sometimes bearing cryptic me dges; spills of hard candies and of bubble gum) with parenthetical subtitles that allude to AIDS, politIcs, and more personal themes. Through May 10. (Open Sundays through Wednesdays, 10 to 6, and Fridays and Saturdays, 10 to 8.) WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ARTr Madison Ave. at 75th St.-The 1995 Biennial exhibition. (Open Wednesday , Saturdays, and Sundays, 11 to 6; Thursdays, 1 to 8, with no admission charge after 6; and Fridays, 11 to 9, with no admission charge after 6 and live music and performances in the lower gallery.) BROOKL YN MUSEUM, Eastern Parkway-"The Pic- tographs of Adolph Gottlieb." By 1941 Gott- lieb (1903-74) had had it with the prevailing American provincial realism and European geometric abstraction The' 'Pictographs" se- ries-gridded paintings with Native Ameri- can, Freudian, J oycean, and other imagery in free-associative compositions-began the evolution of his style toward maturity. Sixty works are on view, supplemented by objects from the museum's tribal-art holdings, many of which were part of the artist's own collec- tion. . . . f]J The museum has impressively re- installed its African holding . The art works and artifacts span a millennium and encom- pass scores of cultures. Much i beautiful, and much is familiar, but it's the weirder stuff that really catches the eye-for example, a gilt "linguist staff" from Ghana. Linguists were high-ranking advisers to the king of the Fante tribe, and they carried such staffs in royal proceSSlOns This one is surmounted by figures that illustrate the Fante proverb "It is only a foolish mouse that tries to get into the cat's bag" Words to live by. (Open Wednesdays through Sundays, 10 to 5.) COOPER-HEWITT MUSEUM r Fifth Ave. at 91st St.- Beach parties, cocktails, airplanes, and modem- art patterns, in an array of colors and textures, are the stars of "Kitsch to Corbusier: Wall- paper from the 1950s."... f]J Books, cata- logues, signs, and stationery, mostly from the fifties and sixties, by the graphic de- signer Elaine Lustig Cohen. Through May 23. . . . f]J "The Structure of Style: Dutch Mod- ernism in the Applied Arts 1880-1930."... f]J A display of jewelry and accessories from the museum' collection, including Egyp- tian mummy beads and gold snuffboxes. (Open Tuesdays, 10 to 9, with no admission charge after 5; Wednesdays through Satur- days, 10 to 5; Sundays, noon to 5.) FRICK COLLECTION r 1 E. 70th St.-' 'Romantics, Neoclassicists, Realists: European Drawings from the Stanford University Museum of Art" includes works from the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by Fragonard, Tur- ner, Delacroix, Fuseli, and others. Through May 14. (Open Tuesdays through Saturdays, 10 to 6; Sundays, 1 to 6.) JAPAN SOCIETY r 333 E. 47th St.-"Gems of the Floating World," a large show of seldom dis- played ukiyo-e prints from the Kupferstich- Kabinett, Dresden. Through June 4. (Open daily, except Mondays, 11 to 5.) MORGAN LIBRARY r 29 E. 36th St.-"The Painted Pdge: Italian Renaissance Book Illumina- ... tion, 1450-1550" demonstrates that Renais- sance artIsts expressed themselves just as exuberantly in illuminated manuscripts as they did in panel painting and sculpture Every item on display is superb. A map of Italy in Ptolemy's "Geography" has the coloristic bravado of an Ellsworth Kelly; the massive choir books from Milan, Lodi, and Cesena have the impressive heft of a Rich- ard Serra. Through May 7.... f]J "Animals as Symbol in Medieval Illuminated Manu- scripts." (Open Tuesdays through Fridays, 10:30 to 5; Saturdays, 10:30 to 6; Sundays, noon to 6.) MUSEUM FOR AFRICAN ART, 593 Broadway-Ante- lope, leopards, hyel1fls, snakes, chameleons, buffalo, pangolins, and wdrthogs-they can all be seen in "Animals in Africdn Art: From the Familiar to the Marvelous." (Open Tuesdays through Fridays, 10:30 to 5:30; Saturdays, noon to 8; Sundays, noon to 6.) NATIONAL ACADEMY OF DESIGN r Fifth Ave., at 89th St.-"Nature Observed, Nature Interpreted," nineteenth-century landscape drawings, wa- tercolors, and oils by seventeen American artists, including Church, Cole, Homer, and Vedder. Through June 13.... f]J "Master- pieces of Nineteenth-Century Italian Paint- ing," works by Giuseppe de Nittis, Gugli- elmo Ciardi, Giovanni Fattori, and others, from the Gaetano Marzotto collection. Through June 11. (Open Wednesdays through Sun- days, noon to 5; Friday evenings until 8, with no admission charge after 5.) GALLERIES-UPTOWN (Unless otherwise noted, gallerzes are open Tuesdays through Saturdays, from around 10 or 11 to between 5 and 6.) JOSEF ALBERS (1888-1976)-Paintings and rare works on paper from his "Homage to the Square" series. Through June 2. (Emmer- ich, 41 E. 57th St.) MARCEL BROODTHAERS (1924-76)-Delicate, witty, and dryly poetic, these works on paper--draw- ings and collages-provide a superb introduc- tion to the eécentric, hard-to-place Belgian artist/poet's themes, which include imaginary museums, classification systems, and his sig- nature. Through May 6. (Werner, 21 E 67th St. Open Mondays.) ARSHILE GORKY (1904-48)-Thirty-nlne drawings from the early thirties that show his devel- oping abstract vocabulary. Through May ':c.. Se!f-portrait by Lorraine Shemesh (Stone).